Monday 13 August 2012 19.05 EDT
First published on Monday 13 August 2012 19.05 EDT

The Duke of Cambridge was shocked by the fallout from Buckingham Palace's decision to alert police after details from a conversation he had on his mobile phone appeared in the News of the World, his friend Tom Bradby, now political editor of ITV News, has said.

In 2005, Bradby called Prince William about meeting to discuss a project. When details of the meeting appeared in the paper, Bradby suggested the royal phone might have been hacked and encouraged the palace to go to the police.

In 2007, the paper's royal editor, Clive Goodman, and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed after they admitted intercepting voicemail messages on royal aides' phones. Since then, the News of the World has been closed, the Leveson inquiry set up and the prime minister's former director of communications Andy Coulson charged in connection with phone hacking.

Bradby told the Radio Times: "We agreed that there was some potential security implication and it was then up to them to go to the police, as they did. Ultimately, it was that tiny nexus on a trivial, unimportant, irrelevant story that triggered this avalanche."

He added: "I had no idea this was going to happen, and neither did he [William]. Have we both occasionally been quite shocked by the scale of the avalanche? Yeah.

"Do I occasionally feel uncomfortable about it? Yup."

He added: "A free press is a pretty critical part of the democratic mix and I would feel nervous about that being diluted."